


Sing Me Softly To My Bed

by raiining



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, a prompt from me to me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-23
Updated: 2014-05-23
Packaged: 2018-01-26 06:15:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1677815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raiining/pseuds/raiining
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil's exhausted.  Fortunately, Clint is there to make it better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sing Me Softly To My Bed

**Author's Note:**

> I found this fic in my WIP folder and desert_neon very kindly agreed to look it over for me. I might have posted it at some point to tumblr, I kind of forget. If it looks familiar to you, that's probably why!

“You look like shit, sir.”

Phil blinks at his paperwork. The page remains stubbornly silent, so he raises his eyes to the doorway and – oh. 

He rubs a hand over his face. “Thank you, Barton. That’s very helpful.”

His brain is too sluggish to do more than note the flash of emotion that crosses Clint’s face. It’s there and gone in less than a second, but a second is usually all he needs. 

He really is tired.

“How much sleep did you get?”

Phil straightens in his chair, trying to will oxygen back into his brain. “Four hours.” Four hours is a lot. Four hours is plenty. Phil has coordinated hostage negotiations on four hours of sleep. He has manned rescue missions, toppled criminal organizations, and recruited the Black Widow (admittedly, after Clint had softened her up) on four hours of sleep. 

He’s fine.

“You don’t look fine.”

Phil scowls. “I know I didn’t say that out loud.”

Clint grins. “You didn’t need to boss. I know that look. That’s a Coulson Special Number Five.”

Clint’s banter is always amusing, and Phil likes the idea that Clint knows him well enough to know his facial expressions (even if he doesn’t, there is no Coulson Special Number Five, Clint’s just being cute. Unfortunately, he’s very good at being cute), but he really is honestly too tired for this today.

“Was there something you needed, Barton?”

Clint gives him a once over. It’s a quick, assessing look, but Phil can feel it peeling back the layers of his self-control. 

“Barton – ”

Clint shakes his head. “No. I mean, I don’t need anything, except for you to get some sleep.”

Phil raises an eyebrow at him, glances at his desk full of paperwork, looks towards the hallway bustling with people, and cycles back to Barton again.

Clint rolls his eyes. “You can take a two hour nap, sir. I won’t tell anyone.”

“And just where am I going to nap, Barton?”

Clint blinks at him. “Er, on the couch?”

Phil shifts irritably in his seat. “That’s your couch.”

“It’s what?”

Fuck. “I mean, it has your creases in it. No, I mean, it won’t be that comfortable. No, wait, it’s just that I mean – ”

Clint’s odd look melts into a fond exasperation at Phil’s fumbled explanation. “Come on, sir. Lie down. Two hours and I’ll wake you up, I swear. We’ll pretend we’re in a safe house.”

That doesn’t actually make things better, except for how it completely does. They’ve spent dozens of hours locked away inside safe houses around the world. Phil approaches the time together with a resigned sort of iron self control. No matter how adorable Clint looks when he’s sleeping, Phil isn’t allowed to stare at him. He isn’t.

Still, he always sleeps best when Clint is there to watch his back.

“Two hours.”

“Two hours,” Clint promises. He closes the office door and steps towards Phil’s desk, ushering Phil out from behind the stacks of paperwork and over to the black leather couch that is Clint’s couch, has always been Clint’s couch, because Phil bought it for him. “I’ll wake you sooner if anything end of the world like happens.”

“Don’t joke,” Phil says, and he means it to be teasing, but it comes out as a sort of whiny plea. He’s had too much end of the world stuff happen this week, some that Clint’s been directly involved in, and some that’s above even _his_ Avengers’ level security clearance.

Clint nods understandingly. Phil shrugs off his suit jacket and drapes it over the hanger he keeps behind his office door, rolling up his shirt sleeves and toeing off his shoes. He glances once at the crease lines on the couch – Clint’s crease lines – before sinking down onto the soft leather with a bone-deep sigh.

As soon as he’s horizontal, the exhaustion he’d sworn he’d been keeping at bay topples him. The force of it knocks his head down into the arm rest, muscles tensing and then relaxing with a suddenness that feels like bliss. 

He’s already half asleep when he hears Clint settle in his office chair. “Two hours,” he promises again, and Phil’s too far gone to do more than nod sleepily in acknowledgement.

Two hours. Clint will wake him in two hours. He’d promised, and Clint always keeps his word.

Secure in the knowledge that Clint is watching his back, Phil sleeps.

 

The End


End file.
